Mother of Dragons: Valyria's Rebirth
by Reykoveyza
Summary: What happened to Drogon after he fled King's Landing with Daenarys' corpse? What path did he take? And was this all that would ever become of Daenerys Stormborn, Azor Ahai, the Prince that was Promised?
1. Chapter 1

Drogon screamed aloud as he flew. This pain, this pain, it burned him like ice, eating at his guts and freezing his fire like that of his golden-white brother, who he had seen fall from the sky and vanish beneath the icy waters. The pain pierced his heart like a bolt from a ballista, punching through his scales like the weapons that had slain his second brother. It stabbed his mind like a dagger sinking into weak human flesh. Weak like that of his Mother. It killed him with every second, and yet he did not die. He only flew as he had always flown, mechanically raising and lowering his wings, seeing nothing but his Mother dead on the ground before him, his last family. Gone.

Eventually his voice faltered and died in his throat, and even he could scream no more. But still he flew on. Often he would turn his head to look at the small body he held in his claws. It looked almost like she was sleeping, her silver hair trailing in the wind of his flight. But the fire inside her, the heat that had marked her out as a dragon like him, despite her puny size, that was all gone. Extinguished as though it had never been.

Drogon's wings grew heavier and he dipped closer to the sea. He viewed its vast blackness with indifference. It would be simple. To slip beneath the waves as both his brothers had. To let go.

He saw waves breaking over something hunched low in the water, and bent his failing wings towards it. A rock jutting out over the glossy sea, black as dragonglass in the gathering dusk.

Hovering as best he could above it, he gently lowered his Mother to the surface and with a thud dropped his own bulk beside her. Heaving a long and rattling sigh that made the scale on his neck quiver, Drogon slumped to the floor.. He rested his head beside hers and watched the salty wind toss her silver hair this way and that until he sank at last into slumber.

Drogon crossed the ocean in fits and starts, exhausted and heavy with grief. His wings were leaden and he collapsed with exhaustion every time he found a place to land. He thought that perhaps he was dying, but that seemed only natural; to follow his Mother and brothers into the long dark night. He did not think about where he was going, choosing to avoid his Mother's homeland and the great grass sea of his hatching and adolescence. Instead he flew blindly, caring only for his precious burden and that she should not be hurt further. But as he went further from the hated land where his Mother had perished, he found himself following a route that he felt he could almost remember. That cliff, that outcropping — did he know them? Hadn't he been here before, long ago?

When at last he saw the outline of a vast island crowned with a sleeping mountain appearing on the horizon, Drogon again quickened his wingbeats. Again, he felt deep inside himself the familiarity of this landscape. That feeling only grew stronger once he was flying overhead, deer and wild goats scattering away through the broken arches and shattered buildings. Following that instinctive call, he swept over the soaring pinnacles and minarets of the ruined city without pausing, and came to rest outside an enormous cave mouth in the side of the volcano. Heavy pulses of heat rolled out from within. Drogon purred with pleasure, and walking carefully on his wings and one foot to better allow him to bear his precious burden, he padded inside. Within the enormous cavern, which could have held him and his brothers and sixty dragons besides, he found exactly what he had somehow expected. Soft, warm sand, heated from below by the throbbing of the volcano's heart, stone worn into bumps and hollows and small caves by countless numbers of Drogon's ancestors.

Smaller animals ran in every direction from Drogon's approach, and scrub crunched underfoot. He paused, brows pulled low and teeth exposed. This was not the peaceful place of repose that his Mother needed and that his own half-memories had led him expect. A low rumble began in his throat, and then, as Mother had often asked him to do, he poured fire upon the place, from stem to stern, burning it clean.

When the fires and the shrubs and the beasts were gone, when it was pure once more, Drogon made his way to the very centre of the cave and scraped a small hollow into the softest sand. There he laid his Mother, so small and fragile, bruised by the wind and rain of their journey, her cheeks sunken and her skin waxy pale. Only her hair looked as it had always done. Drogon sighed again, a long groan of weariness and sorrow, and lay down beside her, his head alongside hers, his wings encircling them both protectively. At last, he could rest.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, in their new home, he feared to leave her side. When he had last done that, the last teetering pillar holding up his world had crumbled to ashes.

So for a few months he drowsed fitful on the warm sand beside her, growing thin and wasted and breathing in her sickly, rotten stench. But eventually, when he tried as always to warm her with the fire that still did not burn her, he couldn't kindle the flame in his throat. He could only spit sparks into the sand around her.

It was only then that he realised what was happening. He was following Mother into those dark shadows from which you could not return — and if he went too, who would care for her here?

That roused him. He struggled to his feet, his scales grinding as he moved for the first time in seasons. He carefully stepped away from his Mother and dragged himself towards the light from the cave mouth.

The hard morning light burned his eyes after so many moons of darkness. It was like emerging from the egg all over again — to go from the safety and warmth and dark into noise and light and confusion. He stumbled on the ledge outside and nearly fell down the slope. He thought about trying to fly, but his wings creaked and ached when he unfurled them, so he opted to slither on his belly down the scree in search of food.

That first day all he caught was a goat kid which only stood still and bleated in fear when its parents fled from Drogon. But on the second day when he submerged himself in a pond in the forest and lay in wait, he captured and devoured two deer and an entire family of foxes, kits and all. By the ninth day he was able to fly once more, and he circled the volcano twice before landing on its rim and bellowing his claim to this territory into the empty sky.

Life resumed its previous pattern. Drogon would hunt; deer, wolves, sometimes even queer grey-skinned men that crunched when you bit them. And then he would return to his cave and his Mother to rest. He bathed her in fire like he would his own egg. He hoped it would warm her spirit, where she was.

Time passed. Drogon grew. Mother's flesh became dry and hard and began to slough away. Trees that had been saplings when they first arrived grew tall and strong. Drogon fed, and grew, and screamed his challenge at his empty domain, and slept beside his Mother every night.

Life was good for Drogon in that time. He was strong and growing fast, well on his way to adulthood at last. He had his own territory, free from men and their incomprehensible claims on his prey and land. And Mother was still with him, in a way. Sometimes he would bring back food for her, and eat it beside the nest where she lay. Sometime he would stay away for days or weeks at a time, exploring the farthest reaches of his ruined island city. But he always returned in the end to their dark, warm cave, to sleep beside her as she slept her endless slumber. He would bathe her in fire as always, and the sand beneath her slowly hardened from the fire and became glossy black dragonglass. Drogon simply swept in more sand on top of this dragon glass nest, to keep her comfortable. As the years passed, the raised nest of dragonglass grew, until Drogon slept curled around a raised plinth dark as pitch, with his Mother's bones white as milk atop it.


	3. Chapter 3

Years stretched into decades, and when the last silvery hair blew away from his Mother's crumbling bones, Drogon felt a change within him. He became hungrier than ever, and he felt a growing concentration of weight and warmth in his belly.

This made it much harder for him to fly; his centre of gravity had always been in his heavily muscled chest, and the focus of his fire had always been in the base of his throat. The changes in his body made him uncomfortable and angry, and he left deep scars in the walls of his vast cave where he lashed out in frustration. He had to hunt more than ever, consuming dozens of beasts every month, when before, one kill a fortnight had been enough to keep him healthy and growing.

He was driven by reasons he didn't fully understand to seek out hotter and hotter places within the bowels of his volcano, and at the slightest provocation would ignite everything nearby. The forests near the cave began to look rather singed. Drogon hunted incessantly for nearly two months, stockpiling most of his food in one large, charred pile next to his nest. His greatest triumph came when he was flying over the sea near one of the islands and heard a muted groaning sung from beneath the waves. Seeing humped backs breaking the surface for air, Drogon plunged. When he rose again, puffing and labouring under the weight of his kill, he held an enormous young leviathan in his talons. It took a lot of work, and a lot of rests, to get it back to the mountainside cave, but eventually Drogon backed into the cavern tail-first, dragging a beast nearly half his own size, with enough blubber and fat to sustain him for months. With a rumble of contentment he collapsed next to his Mother's next and bought his head close to her empty sockets so she could see the blubbery grey meat in his jaws.

After that he did not leave the cave again for nearly six months. He grew too large and heavy, his stomach distended, and he was too tired. He slept most of the time, waking occasionally to seek out a still hotter place or to bathe his own belly in his fire. When he was near his Mother's black dragonglass plinth, he would spare some fire for her, and a little meat, and the exposed grin of her skull seemed to him particularly wise and benevolent.

When the day finally came, Drogon was lying very still, all his energy focused inwardly. All the changes, he felt, had been leading up to this moment. It was all about to culminate in…in something. He just didn't know what yet.

His stomach churned and crumpled loudly, and he scrambled suddenly onto his haunches. With a roiling sensation in the pit of belly, a small push, and the thud of stone on stone, it was over.

Drogon turned his head to see what he had made, deep in the caverns of his ancestors.


	4. Chapter 4

The egg sat on the sand, its pale shell composed of translucently gleaming scales the colour of moonlight, veined here and there with delicate strands of lilac. Drogon rumbled in pleasure and relief that the hardest part of his work was done. Gently, carefully, as he had once lifted his Mother, he scooped up the egg between his teeth and laid the tiny thing amongst his Mother's bones. Then, he took a deep breath, and soft as a whisper, breathed his gentlest flame over them both. He had grown, he knew, but the egg was so _small_, only as long as one of Mother's forearms. It seemed so delicate.

This, then, was the product of those wild, passionate flights he had shared with his brothers more than a century ago. If they had lived and were here with him now, there might be more than one egg resting on that midnight-black plinth beside their Mother.

Life once more renewed its normal pattern for Drogon. He hunted, but never straying far now, an always returning in haste to his precious egg, to press himself against it and shower it with warm sand and share his fire with it, to kindle the little spark of life in there into an inferno. All this he knew how to do instinctively, without thinking. It was as simple as flying.

The egg did not grow or outwardly change, but every day it felt hotter to Drogon's touch. Until, finally, Drogon started to hear a scraping from within the egg. At once, he lifted it away from the bones on the dragonglass and placed it on the sand. He curled his bulk tightly round it and and to it in gentle hums and growls, encouraging it out into the world.

The scratching continued for a long time, long enough that Drogon began to grow concerned. Should he try to break the shell from the outside? Or would that do more harm than good? He deliberated for what felt like an age, but finally his hesitancy was rewarded with the tiniest of cracks appearing in the eggshell.

Holding his breath, Drogon hunched forward and put his head on the floor so his eye was directly next to the egg. He huffed in excitement as the crack widened, and smoke spiralled up from his nostrils. There! Appearing through the small hole, one minuscule clawed wing. It withdrew, and then a hind foot appeared, pushing hard. At last, the egg split in two, and there in the middle of the two halves, pearlescent white and dripping with viscous fluids, sat Drogon's hatchling. At once, he pushed his head towards her, humming a welcome and letting fire kindle in his jaws. Drawn by the warmth, the hatchling turned its head to him and chirped loudly. Its bulbous eyes were still shut tight. Drogon, without ever having realised he had this ability, surprised even himself by vomiting up a small pile of black, meaty liquid. The hatchling sniffed its way over to it, trilled its appreciation, and buried its face in the foul-smelling substance. When at last it was done, the hatchling's belly was distended and its mouth hung open in sleepy satisfaction. It hiccupped, and screeched loudly in sudden irritation. Drogon hastily scrambled forwards to see what it could want, and quickly understood the strident command, which seemed somehow familiar. He opened his mouth and covered the hatchling with fire, burning away the egg fluid that still clung to its scales.

When at last the hatchling was clean, it moved hesitantly out of Drogon's stream of fire, rubbed its eyes, and opened them. Drogon choked on his own flame and snapped his jaws shut in shock. He understood at last what had been happening, why things had to be this way. He knew those eyes. Lilac and lavender, those orbs seemed vast in the hatchling's thin white face, and so much older than its tender age. It — _she _— looked up at Drogon with an ancient, all-knowing gaze and Drogon hissed in pure, pained happiness. At last, he was no longer alone.

The moment was broken when the hatchling blinked, hiccupped, and sneezed all at the same time, and them spat a small gobbet of black liquid meat back onto the ground before her. Then she raised herself up and waddled imperiously away from her discarded eggshell. Drogon hurried to get out of her way, almost comically servile. The hatchling walked across the cave like she knew it and stopped at the base of the dragonglass plinth. She chirruped again, a sharp command, and as he had done a thousand times for her before, Drogon wonderingly offered her a wing and raised her to where she wanted to be. With one last firm look into his eyes, as though to fully impress upon him that it was her, the little silver-white dragon, his own Mother, settled herself down amongst her own bones and slept.


	5. Chapter 5

The dragon hatchling grew swiftly, as Drogon himself had, and soon learned to fly. Drogon again learned what it was to feel the joy of flight with another, in a way that he had not felt since he used to race his brothers over the waves, spiralling over and around each other, moving separately yet together.

His time was absorbed again in going where she bid, hunting for her, warming her, and being with her. A great weight that he had not fully realised was there lifted. He had been so lonely.

He took such pride in seeing her grow day by day. Something he had made and was still helping to make, and better still, an old mistake undone, an old wrong righted.

He saw flashes of her old self continually — in the way she would turn her tiny head; in the long delicate silver frills that grew on her face and neck. But most of all in her luminous eyes, which retained the same expressions as they had always had, now flashing with anger, now sparking with mirth. Sometimes upon first awaking, she would forget herself and walk towards him on her two hind legs before collapsing with a squawk. Her shrills and chirps often sounded almost like the human sounds she could no longer make, as though they were on the tip of her tongue but would not come out.

But overall, she seemed happier. There were no meddling humans to distract her and separate them, none of their small and bewildering quarrels. She could focus on what was really important — eating, sleeping, growing, hunting. The things a dragon _should_ trouble himself about. When she was old enough, he would show her how to fight, how to claim territory as her own, and how to perform the complex aerial manoeuvres that he and his brothers had spent months perfecting. Drogon found an excitement for life deep within himself that he thought had died with Mother and the last of his brothers.

And one day, when the small white she-dragon came and woke him from his nap in their cave, and with excited chirrups led him deep into the depths of the volcano, their happiness was completed. The passageway became too small for Drogon to fit, but the slender white dragon was not yet into the final stages of her adolescence and could go much deeper than he. He listened anxiously as she scrabbled further down the passage, chirping to him all the while, and then returned, with something heavy in her small mouth. She dropped it on the ground before him and it thunked to the floor. An egg. Royal purple shot through with gold. Drogon stared, uncomprehending. This made no sense. The silver-white hatchling was far too small to have produced an egg herself, and besides, there were no other dragons here for her to have made an egg with. But she had vanished again, leaving him with this stranger's egg. He waited uncomfortably for her to return, and she did, only to drop another egg — grey this time — with another thud at his feet.

In amazement Drogon watched her carry dozens of eggs out from the crevasse where they had lain dormant for unthinkable ages. In bewilderment he helped her to carry them back to the cave and lay them on the dragonglass plinth where the finest dusting of powder showed that bones had lain here once. As ever, he let her take the lead, and when she had positioned the eggs to her satisfaction, he watched silently as Daenerys, Mother of Dragons, almost two centuries after her own death, prepared her fire to birth the dragon race once more.


End file.
